SolteK
As any avid SFF fan will know, SolteK have recently hit the scene with their QBic 2000 & 3000 series of 'cubes'. These have only just come out & offer traditional CPU & chassis cooling, but with full control over these fans so that noise levels can be kept as low as is possible, whilst maintaining adequate cooling. They come in white (W model suffix), aluminum (A model suffix), or a stunning mirror finish (M model suffix).The 2000 series has one CD/DVD bay, whilst the 3000 series have two.
They come with the most comprehensive front I/O of any SFF machine! Two USB2, three 1394, two SPDIF, one MIC in & one line out. They have all the other standard affair like onboard sound, graphics, networking, PCI & AGP slot & SPDIF. They are all Intel 845G chipset based.
At the show they had some pre-production versions of the QBiC 2010 & 3020 models. It was unclear what the improvements were over the standard models, other than the aluminum 'billet' fronts - but maybe I just wasn't paying attention!
SolteK are a new player in the SFF market & already can be seen to be aggressively marketing their products. They already have a nice line up of models, but these are really all based on the same hardware, but with different expansion capabilities & finishes.
They also had a mock up of the new QBIC-X. This is styled somewhat like a large bedside clock & is basically a cube PC that allows playback of MP3's & CD's from the units BIOS, via push buttons located on the front. Although it has rather 'un-PC' styling, it's easy to see that its styling will appeal to young people. SolteK hopes it will be a big hit & recognizes that the way to sell more SFF PC's is to make the styling more appealing to the young & women. I think that this statement is very correct & if they can apply the enthusiasm that was displayed to me at the show, in moving their models forward, then there is no reason to suspect that they won't succeed in the SFF market.
